Diary of a Wizarding Mutant
by Count Jim 'tribbles' Moriarty
Summary: In a not so distant future, when the X-Men are either time locked, in another dimension or dead, with the passing of Logan and Xavier a mere decade away, the Ministry of Magic starts a new project for the wizardification of Mutant Kind.
1. Chapter 1

**_I do not own the_** **_rights to any elements of the Harry Potter Universe, the Marvel Comics X-Men Universe, nor any part of Doctor Who. No copyright infringement is intended._**

 ** _Bold italics are stage directions; the rest is just for_** **emphasis _, etc..._**

 ** _Very liberal narration, you'll maybe notice. Very loose fit into canon (it is a crossover medley), and semantic tomfoolery._**

 ** _I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it._**

 ** _Any feedback is a plus, much appreciated even if negative (especially if negative in fairness)._**

 ** _Cheers_**

 ** _As of 11/06/2017 there has been a slight change to the contents of this chapter. If you miss it, it is written in the next footnote, in the interests of new readers being unspoiled._**

* * *

September the 2nd, 2039:

01:43 p.m

 **F.X** : knock on the door

 **A** : What?

 **Will'um** : **_muffled_** _,_ it's the post, mate.

 **A** : Post? What are you talking about?, you clod, I get no post. We've been over this before: all my correspondence is numerical; now do one!

 **Will'um** : I know all that mate, but it's got your name on it, mate...

 **F.X** : door opens

 **A** : Let me have that! **_reading_** The Wart, A. King, room 379, third floor University campus Block B, Nancy, Fra – **_to Will'um_** – Buzz off!

 **F.X** : door shuts abruptly

 **Will'um:** Ooo! Mate, me nose ooo...

Dear Diary,

The envelope contained one letter, written in biro on a neat square of recycled industrial paper, and another envelope, this of much finer fibres, and a little weathered at the edges. The latter contained yet another letter, also very frail, but lovingly scribed in lush black ink. Starting with the former, I have copied the contents of both below:

Dear Artie,

You remember Bernstein from primary school? The one we never saw at junior high even though his family never moved? I have news from him. He wrote to me about this fantastic place, "Hogwarts", where you learn magic and how to become a sorcerer. For real. Apparently their top brass has approved a kind of expansion program for the admission of mutants into the school, and now is the time to start signing on! The shoddy parchment is a joint invitation for the two of us (sent by Bernstein on behalf of _them_ , since we live off the grid etc...)

Seriously, drop everything. I think you can do without _another_ master languages degree; this is the biggest thing since Xavier's school, I swear. I'm leaving tomorrow, 09:00 a.m. If you don't want repeat visits from your dumbass doorman bearing tea-stained tissue paper with faded blotchy runes (they'll work out where you live eventually), join me at the station. We can have a cuppa _chez_ Paul's.

Love, Cass

Dear Sirs,

We have the honour of inviting you to join the Pan-Solaric Association for the Study of Alternative Forces, among many thousands of pioneering students, on a new course specially elaborated for Mutant Kind as a legitimate actor in the Wizarding World.

With my sincerest salutations,

T. Tricophen, Spokesman for the Central Committee

September the 3rd:

09:27 a.m

Dear Diary,

From the ground it looked like no more than a carefully restored steam train, with huge locomotive, flimsy wooden carriages et al. I thought nothing of it. Lots of agencies who manage their own transport prefer style over substance. That's why we still see the occasional aeroplane dodging over a sky-full of zeppelins. However, to my knowledge, regardless of copious furnishing with oak, mahogany, comfy brown couches and brass doorknobs, no railroad vehicle habitually and candidly takes to the skies – and at that without ostensibly even coming off the tracks. Granted it doesn't much sound like tracks; beneath the (actually quite reassuring) chugga-chugga of the steam engine is a low drone, like scraping a key against a piano string. Certainly we're not on rails – and I have witness my beloved Nancy sinking below the clouds – but not flying either. The windows are inexplicably jammed, so I can't stick my neck out and get answers. I'm told our terminus is what I suppose must be a space station in orbit somewhere. Lina, of course, attributes all of the how and logistics to magic. She won't say anymore than in the letter. Nothing useful anyway: someone, a flight attendant, stewardess...ticket collector?, (What _do_ you call the staff on a _space ferry train_?) had the bright idea to leave some ages-old newspapers in the cabins for passengers to read; and so on she goes, reading semi aloud, commenting effusively every 15 or so words. It doesn't seem to bother her that as I nod at her, wince and frown sporadically as if attentive at all to the exquisite play of her lips, the shake of her head, her rippling lava-red hair and the glittery green of her ever flitting eyes, my quill pen writes continuously, audibly scratching ink onto paper, so that it's quite shamefully obvious my focus is elsewhere. It shouldn't bother me, really, after years and years of like behaviour between us. Some things you just never get used to.

11:08 a.m

 **Receptionist** : Name?

 **Lina** : Pauline Franklin.

 **Receptionist** : **_to A_** , Why do you keep calling her "Cass"? I heard you a mile off.

A: 'Pending on mood, my dear fellow, I do address this good lady friend of mine as Cass, Cassandra, Lina, Nina, Allie, Ollie, Polly and any other diminutive that catches my fancy.

 **Receptionist** : I see. Well while we're at it, what's your nickname?

 **A** : Nick.

 **Receptionist** : Um. **_to Lina_** , Age?

 **Lina** : 38

 **Receptionist** : Now _you're_ being funny!

 **Lina** : Well... If you insist on cohering with my looks let's say 21.

 **Receptionist** : Right. Um, place of birth?

 **Lina** : Franco-Scots Empire, Dublin.

 **Receptionist** : That'd make you 11 years old.

 **Lina** : All right, fine. Bar-le-Duc; unregistered child. The day the hospital blew up.

 **Receptionist** : Very good...

 **F.X** : counter goes ding

 **Receptionist** : ...So, one inscription form for P. C, C, L, N, A, O, P – and others – Franklin; aged 21, born in Bar-le-Duc without the registry system, 38 years ago. Nothing odd there.

 **A** : You know what I think is odd?

 **Lina** : I can see it coming. 'Something nagging me since I opened my trap…

 **A** : We're all speaking perfect English! **_to Receptionist_** , It's normal for me, I dunno about you – and in fairness you do get loads of decent anglophonics throughout Europe nowadays, even in the dusty corners – but it's not normal for a bunch of people, including 'Pauline' here, who I distinctly heard, back _down there_ board the train nattering in anything from thick mosellan accents to some abominable medley of American 'r's, French and British 'a's, 'd's, and 't's…

 **Lina** : You're right. You should have corrected me a half dozen times by now…

 **A** : …to suddenly start spewing Received Pronunciation!

 **Receptionist** : I'll give you this: you're the last two in line but you're the first to notice today.

 **Lina** : Fascinating, isn't it? **_to Receptionist_** , So is it magic?

 **Receptionist** : Of course not! The type of spell needed for manipulating your higher cognitive functions like that would be a nightmare to conceive. Why, there must be pages worth of bad Latin, neo-Greek and ink splotches to string together. And recite by heart. Then you'd have to keep re-casting the spell all the time – and open an insane asylum for the poor sods you hire to do that. Out here on the fringe of Space it's off the cards for sure. No, not magic, just a piece of alien technology, the Translation Circuit does a fine job...

 **A** : Alien? "Just" alien?

 **Receptionist** : Oh come on! Junk has been getting randomly dumped on Earth or nearabouts for millennia. Word is the universe beyond the Oort Cloud is teeming with life and activity, but we don't get to see it because all the other civilisations are avoiding us.

 **Lina** : And that would be ...why? Frightened of us? Are we too primitive? We could use a hand, squatting this rock... But what about that Translator Wotsit, any clue of its origins? Like, for sure? Sure it's not just some lucky earthly crackpot's doings?

 **Receptionist** : I think it's from some smashed up time machine they cannibalised, 'don't recall what they were calling it though.

 **A** : So, _Pan-Solaric Association for the Study of Alternative Forces_ , just how magicky are we? I mean, the train on a tight-rope into orbit is admittedly surreal but...

 **Receptionist** : I will reproach you this: you're very talkative, and so am I. Indeed were it not for my faultless ability to recover from a digression...

 **Lina** : You're at least two digressions late already! **_aside_** _Men_ …

 **Receptionist** : ...We might well have overlooked the important things: you need an inscription form, Nick. Name?

09:54 p.m

Upon rejoining our fellow _Nancéens_ , we walked interminably through a maze of intersecting corridors, from what I could tell arbitrarily taking right or left turns, rising one level now, descending two a little later, always going _past_ the innumerable doors, hatches and other openings, all closed, yes, but often invitingly devoid of locks. No one dared question our guides, two ancient, heavily robed, skyscraping old women in pointy hats. Leading the way, never deigning to look at us, they glided soundlessly forward as if standing on invisible rails.

Within a few minutes of our exiting the Reception Area, the procession was dead silent. Then somebody slipped. The little group of twenty odd teens, middle-aged men and two particularly bewildered twin sisters had been instinctively, unconsciously, inexplicably huddling close together. As Lina and I tumbled into each other's arms, thrashing, and into the heap, it hit me: I wasn't writing, and you my diary were in my hand closed, pen tediously sandwiched between my two longest fingers. Indeed everyone around me was apparently bound within the bounds of conventional human existence. There was no trace in the air of the thick, honey-sweet Artron energy usually saturating the olfactory senses in any grouping of mutants. We had been _defanged_. Suddenly I could justify the cold sweat turning my hair clingy.

I have a faint suspicion we were purposefully brought to breaking point. When everyone was up off the floor again, were led just around the corner, past a three-way junction and straight to one pair of gigantic wooden doors. Were they really ever that far?

Our guides sidled against the walls either side of us, and one uttered the first sound we would ever hear from them: she shushed at the double doors; something shushed back immediately, and the wood parted gracefully. We were ushered gently beyond.

It was like an ancient Greek theatre: a huge hemicycle of stone benches on a couple dozen levels; the circular Orchestra, the Skene and Proskenion, all sitting directly under a full sky of multicoloured stars, and one traumatically enormous crater-pocked ball of grey, yellow and white rock: our very own Moon. I felt rather than heard the gasping astonishment of my fellows. Fortunately this time no one faltered so much as to fall over.

The place was empty; not a sign of life across the entire Theatron or any parts of the stage. Yet there was undeniably a presence of some unfathomable nature. I caught myself looking over my shoulder at nothing repeatedly; the others were doing it too. Finally someone emerged from the Skene, another ancient lady. She moved swiftly to the centre of the Orchestra. Though you couldn't make out the details of her face, the focus of her gaze as it fixed was glaringly obvious.

"The others will be here shortly," said a thin steely voice, "you should take your seats before they do."

As the party sat itself down obediently, sticking to the upper and farthest benches, I could see that even Lina was satisfied the distant robed figure had been the latest cause of discomfort. In me, the nagging sense of being watched from close behind persisted, and even when the theatre filled and became packed, I couldn't stop spinning around the notion of total exposure: someone could see me inside out, every organ, every cell, every molecule and every atom - every thought, devouring me.

I was vaguely aware of humans stacking up around me. Briefly, while there were still too few talking to cloud my thinking, I was cut short in my circular reflections by a hand on my thigh, and Lina's other arm curling around my shoulder. Her embrace made me relatively calm for several odd minutes. Soon however, the soundscape saturated with the hissing and squealing of thousands of nervous and excitable humanoids at widely varying stages of growth and decay, drowning everything except my awareness of the _other_ , which was consequently enhanced, as if I were locked in a dark room with it, intangible, inescapable entity of nothingness. I broke down sobbing.

 _"Enough idle talk. I am ready for you."_

* * *

 ** _And there it is folks, Segment #1. Part of the mystery voice's dialog has already been written, so it might come in less than two months. Don't hesitate to point to anything that's too obscure or incomprehensible or whatever, that I might take steps to rectify stuff. And if you do find this particularly toxic, do drop by and let me know why; just don't be nasty, down, vindictive, etc..._**

 ** _The Author has changed the Universal Translator Plot Device from a Telepathic Circuit to a Translation Circuit. We will explain later._**


	2. Chapter 2

_**The views and opinions expressed in this work of (fan) fiction do not**_ **necessarily** _ **reflect the views and opinions of the Author.**_

 _ **Also, in addition to**_ **not** _ **owning the rights to Harry Potter, X-Men, and Doctor Who, nor does the Author have any claim on E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Skylark series, the Lensman series, the Star Trek Universe or Charles Chilton's Journey Into Space. We know. It's a lot. Shoot us for all we care.**_

* * *

Stunned silence; I fancy even the Moon stopped dead in her own apparent stillness.

"Something wrong?" the speaker was on the opposite side from the Theatron from me. I failed to make out then whether the voice was male or female, but it had distinctly youthful impatience.

" _If you would deactivate your thought-screen, young man, I would be grateful for avoiding the inconvenience of using a material larynx to address the assembly."_

The answer had been spoken all at once by a large body of velvet-draped ancients now occupying the Orchestra, in absolute synchronicity. Every soul squirmed audibly at the realisation, but the Entity merely was silent a few seconds, as if revelling in our discomfort, before launching into an apologetic ramble about the nature of her existence, justifying the recent mind-probing of us all. At least, a ramble is the way my memory formulates the experience. I recall, crystal clear, a whole speech, its turns of phrase, words and punctuation, as if I had myself written it (which is appropriate since I propose to reproduce it below). Yet, in real time, I think it was over in less than a minute. Even then, the mysterious thing just materialised in my internal cognitive space felt like a solidly established record. Only after I glanced around me (notably at a man beside me staring at a gold-plated fob-watch as if trying to will the hands forward), to see generalised befuddlement, was it clear 'Sally' can info-dump us arbitrarily. The contents as follows:

" _In the past hours, I have maimed you, tired you and picked your brains apart. Brutish you'll say, and I agree, when the point is merely to determine whether you are friend or foe (and tangentially sort you into four different "houses" as per tradition). I'm sorry. But, you see, I don't trust a magically semi-sentient hat with the job, nor any kind of psychic automata, so I have to scratch together a protocol that works all by myself. So far so good: a mind-mincer of boredom and exhaustion. 'Really does bring down your natural psionics defences, you know. And turns you all against me. Never mind._ You _try life as a telepathic computer on an invisible space-station endlessly circling the Moon. I feel a bit thin. It's most entertaining when people walk in with gadgetry specifically designed to stump me. Yes, that would be you, Des Esseintes. I only just this moment know who and what you are, and have only just this moment got in touch with your subconscious. That's all it is paralysing you all by the way: just me and the shady corners of your brains working against you. It isn't permanent. It's not like the genome-editing curses they used on wizard-born freaks during the 1990s. I'll let you loose again soon, with material refreshments for your chagrined legs. And don't worry that I have rifled through your most intimate, embarrassing memories. I shan't keep them. I shall promptly erase my knowledge that someone here was once_ épris _of the same person over a period of three years and never asked them out. I shall promptly erase that some were highly regarded faculty teachers of ancient literature while fostering an outrageous affinity for Techno. I'll forget the many times Mother saw your dangly bits dangling from the wrong places. But first, let me draw your attention, if not introduce you, to my staff. You've already met the Receptionist, all, the same one, and you've all at the very least heard mention of the official postcard from Tiberius Tricophen. Well, neither is here. Your inscription forms have to be affiliated with the Ministry of Magic, and so down they both are in London dealing with the paperwork. Therefore, I'm going to leave you in the capable hands of Miss Minerva Barrister, my immediate superior, and her own underlings. Be wary, as well as respectful of the Committee; they are largely up to teaching you the dos and don'ts of your stay here. But before I go, know two things: first, you may address me as Sally, for that is my name. Second, you are under no obligation to follow any strictly formatted course over any fixed length of time. Beside that it would be inappropriate with a lot of you already committed to full time lives, we really, not to put too fine a point on it, we don't have a plan. There is new and exotic academia here beyond the dreams of Charles Xavier himself, only we don't presume to add the pressure of exams. You will not be sitting any NEWTs or OWLs anytime soon. This is a second home, a retreat, a holiday camp as you like it, or just an opportunity to see the Solar System from four different perspectives, here at Solaria Station Luna, Mercurion, Pluton, and the ancient Martian outposts throughout the asteroid belt. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and rethink the architecture. It isn't very ergonomic at the moment. Enjoy lunch, or whatever large meal it is. And try to get as much rest a you can. See you later."_

Over the following half-hour, the actual sorting ceremony took place. Standing a few paces out of the robed huddle in the Orchestra, Miss Barrister called out each name with its allocated house successively. As she spoke, the entire Theatron reconstituted itself, stone benches swiftly sliding past and over each other, ferrying their startled passengers far from their loved ones and into strange company. I was still struggling to make head or tail of the situation when my neighbours were all spirited away, and the little twenty-some of north-eastern French folk was dissolved. Even the twins were separated. By the time I registered that Pauline was gone she was already two thirds of the hemicycle away and still going.

I found myself among men and women of all ages and sizes, with this in common: there was nothing about their physique to suggest what any of them could do as mutants. I crossed gazes with a brown lady in heavily layered regency dress.

"What house is this?" I asked. She raised an eyebrow, " _Slytherin_ of course."

It wasn't until four o'clock that the 'meal' was over, and how it did drag. Taking a steam-locomotive into space and coming aboard a labyrinthine space-station orbiting the Moon, I would expect to have seen the last of French, upper class eating habits, especially on such a grand scale, and made even more detestably ridiculous by the magically self-cleaning hardware, the food flying straight out of the kitchens into our plates, and the infuriating habit of neglected elements to helpfully heat themselves up again, as if determined to leave a permanent imprint on vexed noses of their foul, endlessly renewed stenches. I sat through the _entrée_ , and rejoice notice, salad laden aberration; it deservedly received exactly like treatment from all but a choice few of House Slytherin. I cannot fathom what the main course actually was. I gnawed at the edges and found its innards stuffed with unimaginable horrors. The obligatory cheese interval, and the olfactory saturation of a hundred configurations of control-curdled milk, brought distant memories of a school trip to Spain, and a nauseating cream-cheese factory. I vaguely wonder that I didn't double up and die, but most likely it helps that hardly anything had passed my lips before then. When dessert finally came I gorged myself on apples, pears, and the bowlfuls of self-cracking almonds and hazel nuts. I regret to note that my comrades did not appreciate the finer pleasures of uncorrupted fruit. They watched me, frowning a little, from behind their _Dames Blanche_ , _Profiteroles_ , and Magnums.

I spotted Cassandra from afar, trying every delicacy reachable, ostensibly commenting on her discoveries to her new acquaintances, and generally stuffing herself. It's the same with every one of her: she loves eating. If there's any greater vice throughout the Cosmic All than the organic reproductive system, and all the emotional disorders that follow, it's the delusion that food is in any way interesting. That there is, beyond the painful necessity, some fodder for spiritual or intellectual growth, liberation, _épanouissement_ ; that to be a cook, or just skilled at producing varied 'exotic' configurations of edible matter somehow commands respect; all of that is embarrassing. We suck at putting our faculties to good use.

I'm disappointed in the elected means of transit between the Solaria station and the asteroid belt. There was no space-locomotive, or interplanetary airliner; no airship to fly through a magic mini-wormhole. Instead, we were led to the Apparation Chamber, a small rectangular room with something like a stage at one end, and a crude computer interface on the wall opposite. We were instructed to walk onto the stage in an orderly manner, all of us, several hundred individuals stretching way back into the corridors. The last of the first six of the procession, the moment I was both feet on the raised platform, it happened: we apparated. It wasn't a pleasant experience. Given the sudden pallor of my fellow five pioneers, I think, again, it was just as well I ate next to nothing substantial at the feast. Just the same, my stomach turned, and the taste of my own black bile fuzzed over the events of the evening.

11:03 p.m.

I'm still waiting to be "let loose" as Sally puts it. Both my forearms are burning, and I still haven't got through recording today. Has she forgotten?

I give up.

September 4th:

07:29 p.m.

Dear Diary,

I recall that, last night, I witnessed an extraordinarily long first time conversation in my new quarters, between my new roommates, Carlos Des Esseintes and Mark Duquesne. I am still deprived of telekinesis, and so was unable to record their rambling discussion on the nature of Mutant genetics, with reference to the conflicting findings of Charles Xavier, my younger brother Sir Christian Godson-King, and Duquesne's own researcher uncle. However I note two points of high interest: first that Carlos' ancestors worked for the Martians, and therefore the Des Esseintes bloodline was absent from Tellus as of the late 1800s till the invasion in the latter half of the 20th century, _therefore there is no credence to Mutant Kind's association with the Atomic Age._ Second, that Duquesne was Head of the Archive for the longest time, and is still retrospectively contracted to facilitate the identification and arrest, by whatever means, of any individuals linked to the illegal procuring of information during his term of service. He has stated that he _isn't_ evil, but I would much prefer to face the double-dealing galactic murderer that I definitely _have_ read about at some time in the last twenty odd years, _in the Archive_. One or the other of us must be transferred to another asteroid, or he dies.

09:13 a.m.

This morning, at the breakfast table, I ate. Normally. Heartily. I even made a show of smiling appreciatively. I think by this method I have evaded certain snide remarks from my comrades big and small, judging from their looks of disappointment. However, my luck didn't extend so that I not suffer to hear the rumours of what the night-prowlers had discovered in the dark, dank corridors of the lower levels. Apparently, some curious souls wandered the asteroid's tortuous tunnels and lo, they found a door they could not open. It is said that beyond is a secret chamber, a forbidden tomb where possibly lies the long-buried body of the erstwhile Martian resident, who would have led this ship to Tellus during the (botched) take-over attempt in the mid 1970s. Am I alone to know my history?, or is it really not a myth that the Martians weren't well nigh extinct when the invasion fleet was completed? I feel like I broke some implicit accord and violated an ancient tradition in suggesting the explorers had found merely the locked entrance to a sphere hangar (because obviously you don't want people freely going for joy rides in the void amidst the huge rocks somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter), or, _even better_ , the source of the myth, the safe-room for the electronic brain which used to issue orders to the conditioned, dumb crew based on the wishes of an unseen _human_ supervisor, (who himself was a link in a viciously circular hierarchy of more humans, ending, as far as we know, either in a handful of more humans, or one lone, single, centuries old and still decaying Martian. I hate to think what fairy tales will have sprouted around Des Esseintes' family history.

What I want to know is whose idea was it, the great sodding fool, to convert the main control room of a working spaceship, capable of reaching Alpha Centauri in under seventy years, into a _breakfast hall_?

11:07 a.m.

Il nia pa moaïen de komunike normalman, nor can I speak any of my many mother tongues properly without butchering them – except English, special courtesy of that confounded Translation Circuit. Thus I cannot write an angry letter of abuse to T. Tricophen, insisting, on pain of a complaint to the Supreme Pan-Asian Court for a count of two mutant-hostile actions, first that he have the Translation Circuit deactivated and thrown into the Sun, or into a subduction zone, or the Earth's Core, or straight into empty space already, and second that he remind Sally to restore our powers, that I may preserve optimal use of my hands, _and crush his skull to a pulp from a distance!_

All is not lost, however. I may yet voice my concerns to the Committee. Far below me, the spiralling stone stairs exiting this dorm room spiral directly to it, is a great carven hall, Aztec and Mayan sculptures set into all six faces. Down there, I, and most of my bewildered peers, attended... something. I don't know whether to call it a lesson. I certainly hope it won't happen often. What to call a process where a standing crowd of people, tightly packed into one high walled room, is shared between six masses of black drapes in pointy hats floating a few feet above the floor, and, in clear unwavering voices, talking? For that was it, really. If you migrated to different parts of the crowd, you noticed that the drapes spoke not synchronously, they didn't talk alike, nor did they all progress logically from point to point, from A to B, with their subject matter; but it was all the same subject matter, and at no point was there exchange between the speaker and the (would-be) listeners. I can't remember half of what was said. Fortunately Duquesne is something of an insider to the magical world, and so was able to pick out the key points, and outline them to me. I still don't understand half of it, but he did made sure I got the jist of the first spell the faculty plan to teach us, and that is what gives me hope, in spite of its utter ridiculousness: the Patronus Charm. Setting aside the namby pamby poppycock about happy memories and shimmering silver animals (although it is magic, so they say, and I say they're extremely lucky crackpots, so what do I expect?) it could provide a viable means of corresponding with impossibly distant people, like Lina on faraway Pluto, or Tiberius Tricophen... all in perfect violation of the universal laws like The Speed of Light, which doesn't bear thinking of but still... any means are good that lead back to non-empty threats of remote-controlled brain mincing.

02:15 p.m.

What terrible power do the mutants of Slytherin wield that they all (myself included) look no stranger than ordinary human beings? And is it very wise to lump us all together? Even if we are all telekinetics, or mostly telepaths, or mostly empaths, it seems a folly to create such a concentration of psionics. Are we all misfits?, in which case half of my scattered-across-the-globe acquaintances should be here, yet I see none. Are we all chameleons socially and or physically?, in which case Cass should be around, along with all the metamorphs every country is bursting with (though with our powers switched off how do you tell?). Are we all part of the shadowy underground movements?, in which case Duquesne lies when he says he hasn't seen any other members of the Archive around, because I know lots of mutants work in there. Or are Mutant Kind sufficiently numerous that one theatronful leaves several hundred to spare?

Most importantly, why has nothing happened since lunch?

Is this a actually ploy to exterminate us once and for all?

What is a genome editing curse? Was Khan involved?

" _Hallo everyone! I was held back with the Gryffindors. There's a majority of youngsters, you see. It can get quite out of hand, after I release them, when the mutant gene pool veers toward Cosmogony. I had to create a subroutine of myself to watch over them. But I'm all yours now. It's time to open the mysterious door. If I might say so myself, my Ollivander construct is working positive marvels so far. I can't wait to try it out on House Slytherin."_

[Recorded 04:56 p.m. while following the crowd into the lower levels. Duquesne and Des Esseintes deal with steering – until now].

* * *

 _ **Also, bear in mind the Narrator has not told the main character that we are publishing his recorded continuum of thoughts for people to read. Therefore as far as he is concerned, you don't exist, and thus don't need filling in on the gaps. However, rest assured the Author will not go out of his way to trip you up i.e. it all makes some sense eventually. We hope.**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**The Author says he has the beginnings of a grand plan in mind.**_

* * *

05 :38 p.m.

 _ **Sally :**_ _You may as well go the three of you together. 'Shake up the monotony for the old man._

 **Des Esseintes** : You said he was a construct… Surely he doesn't experience time ?

 _ **Sally**_ _: It's essential he experiences time. It makes it easier to factor in increasing experience and wisdom to the program. You see he's very good at choosing wands for regular wizards, because years on the job. If he's fresh for every new mutant he'll never learn anything. As I see it Ravenclaw will get the best kit, if all goes smoothly… and don't call me Shirley._

 **A :** _Ravenclaw_ is going to get better averages than _us_?

 _ **Sally :**_ _Oh don't st_ _art. Go._

 **Duqesne** : Ssssh.

 **F.X. :** Doors slide open making 'Ssssh' sound.

 **Crun** : Mnk (cough) Come in, come in gentlemen. **_Aside_** , must find my glasses…

 **A :** Where did all this wood come from ? The nearest source of vegetation is Mars, and even she only grows brittle rhubarb…

 **Des Esseintes :** Holograms. Holograms forever.

 **F.X. :** 'Poc'

 **A :** But this is solid !

 **Duquesne** : So ? Clearly someone can afford molded force fields. All you need is more power than even Zeus could fathom…

 **Duquesne** _ **&**_ **Des Esseintes :** …or magic.

 **Crun :** Have you seen my glasses ?

 **Des Esseintes :** Some kid must have run off with them.

 **A** : Holographic glasses ? What good would they be ?

 **Des Esseintes :** _**nodding toward Ollivander construct,**_ Clearly _he_ needs them.

 **A** : But he isn't real ! If he needs glasses then that's sloppy programming !

 **Duquesne :** Very complicated sloppy programming…

 **F.X. :** Click, intercom buzz

 **Barrister :** _ **through holographic loudspeaker,**_ Yes ?

 **Crun :** Min, where are my spectacles ?

 **A** : He's no use is he ?

 **Duquesne :** Obviously factoring in increased wisdom and experience was too much to cope with.

 **Des** **Esseintes** : Let's just find stuff ourselves !

 **A** : Good plan.

 **Barrister :** _ **through holographic loudspeaker,**_ SALLY ! Your hack muggle wizardry is falling apart !

 _ **Sally :**_ _No_ _it isn't. Just remind him he's got a spare in his trouser pocket_.

 **F.X. :** Click, intercom buzz again

 **Crun :** Where are my spectacles ?

 **Barrister** : In your trousers !

 **Crun** : Mnk. What ?

 **A** : _**to Duqesne**_ _,_ How many wands per shelf do you think ?

 **Duquesne** : Couple 'a hundred ? Assuming there's only one in each box.

 **A** : They all look the same too. All wood, rectangular, brown, boring—

 **Duqesne** : Where's Carlos ?

 **A** : …

 **Des** **Esseintes** : _**Distant,**_ I've found a staff !

 **Crun** : What are you doing in there ? Come out before I—

 **F.X** : heavy wooden things fall over. Glass shattering. Series of small explosions. Clatter of teeth on the floor.

 **Crun** : Where are my legs ?

 **Barrister** : _**intercom speaker soon giving out**_ _,_ SALLY ! Get down there at once !

 **Sally** : _**distant**_ _,_ _Can't it wait ten minutes ? There's…wrong… …chamaeleon …Luna, and… …from NASA due in… …you know_.

 **F.X**. : Presumably intercom couldn't take M. Barrister's shouting anymore : 'Pop'

 **Duquesne** : _**distant**_ _,_ What's it like, the staff ?

 **Des Esseintes** : _**even more distant**_ _,_ Very big, wooden, and just a spot warm.

 **A** : Duquesne ?

 **Duquesne** : _**distant**_ _,_ Yes ? Oh. You were just beside me a moment ago. Where are you ?

 **Crun** : I'm trapped behind a rosewood wand stack!

 **Des Esseintes** : _**still more distant**_ , Duquesne ?

 **Duquesne** : _**distant**_ _,_ Yes ?

 **Des Esseintes** : _**and further**_ _,_ Wart ?

 **A** : Yes ?

 **Des Esseintes** : _ **slightly closer**_ , By my reckoning, you form two points of a triangle with me at the summet and the base between you. I'm going to try and use my staff to shove everything out of the way along the line perpen –

 **Duquesne :** _ **further**_ Hang on ! You too are both on either side of me from here !

 **A** : Rubbish. You're both off to my left somewhere.

 **Des Esseintes :** _ **distant, slightly lowered voice**_ _,_ Sod it.

 **F.X**. : Somewhere, crack of blue light. Tremendous explosion followed by more small ones. Wood splintering. Domino effect wand stacks collapsing and toppling into each other.

 **Duquesne :** _ **distant**_ _,_ Nothing new here.

 **Des Esseintes & A** : You !

 **Duquesne** : _**distant**_ _,_ Actually, I've found… —I know exactly where you are.

 **Duquesne** : …

 **A** : You were just around the corner ?

 **Duquesne** : I was probably several corners away. But it only took one to get to you both.

 **A** : I have a headache.

 **Des Esseintes** : Serves us right. I think we lost track of the hologram situation, and that we don't know how big the real room is.

 **A** : And where our voices came from ? That can't be falsified… by accident ? What's that on your wrist?

 **Duquesne** : Arisian lens, I think. Goodness knows how Sally got hold of this, but if I ever get a chance she's going straight to the High Council for treaty violations. And if you don't help I'll have you boxed away for passivity in times of crisis.

 **A** : You'll never get a chance. She lives in computers.

 **Duquesne** : Indeed…

 **Des Esseintes** : _**to A**_ _,_ What of you ? Anything nice in those boxes ?

 **A** : Haven't looked yet.

 _ **Opens one, holds long thin stick, shining finish, very deep brown.**_

Wand. What to do with a wand ?

 **Duquesne** : Swish it around ?

 **F.X.** : Weedy green light slashes through the air and viciously dissipates.

 **A** : Pins and needles.

 **Des Esseintes** : Try another one.

 **F.X**. : Wildly spiralling coil of blue flame snakes across the room and—

 **Crun** : _**senile**_ _,_ Ghnnng, (cough), (splutter)…

 **F.X**. : — bones clattering.

 **A** : Ow.

 **Des Esseintes** : 'Nother one ?

 **Duquesne** : That box is pretty big.

 **A** : _**opening it**_ _,_ Some wands are bigger than others. Probably just as painful and impotent as — Oh.

 **Des Esseintes** : Is that bone ? Not human bone surely…

 **A** : Don't grab. And quit calling everyone Shirley.

 **Des Esseintes** : …

 **Duquesne** : Well, give it a wave.

 **F.X.** : Thump as body hits the floor.

 **Duquesne** : Just try not to point it at anyone.

 **A** : Except voluntarily.

 **Duquesne** : You mean...?

 **A :** It's mine.

 **Des Esseintes** : _**getting up, large bump on forehead,**_ I've a mind to retaliate, but I wonder I might damage the hologram projectors.

 **A** : It's not as if you'd already wrecked almost everything. I think as punishment they'll make us clear up the mess even with it being only half real.

 _ **Sally**_ _: Actually I'd just like you to clear off. And congratulations: you've managed to hog the three most expensive and powerful artefacts I was hoping to keep to myself when this is over._

 **A** : Serves you right for over-complicated programming.

 _ **Sally**_ _: Yes, well usually I don't have to dabble in sixth order technology to avoid magical sabotage in the fifth order — and don't you be insolent with me. Now, again, clear off, get out of here before I rematerialise and abuse you all verbally!_

06:29 p.m.

Dear Diary,

Immediately after we obtained our focus instruments, a somewhat tetchy subroutine of Sally led us out of the lower levels.

It was a far longer climb than before, up through a honeycomb of spiralling stairways. As far as I could fathom they all went straight toward the surface, but she led us along a specific route from segment to segment. We asked, but she wouldn't answer why.

Alighting from the last corckscrew of narrow steps, it tranpired that, I suppose, Sally redid the architecture in the Asteroid. The already cavernous complex of minor ex-control rooms, equipment and fuel stores, and the old personnel reconditioning chambers all around the great hall, has expanded. It's now ornate too. Gone are the blank, battleship grey walls in every corridor. It appears the surrounding rock has been directly layered with great slabs of transluscent marble. And all along is a continuous freco of etched markings, runes in all kinds of languages, hieroglyphics, and, somehow, the odd chalkboard. On one, someone had already taken the time to carefully draw a set of geometrically overlapping circles, of moderately varying sizes. Duquesne raised an eyebrow at it. I glanced at Carlos for his feelings but he merely shrugged.

About the only feature that remains unchanged in the maze is the quite random placement of the little stairways leading up up to the cylindrical, dome roofed sleeping quarters at surface level. That and the Mayan-Aztec hall, which remains beautifully carved as ever. Everything else has been enhanced somehow. Or defiled. Duquesne, who made a point of visiting every bit of the new fangled asteroid layout, tells me that the ship's erstwhile main control room has been further distanced from it's original purpose, and gone from a makeshift breakfast hall to a rather extravagantly large lounge. Also, it's ceiling plays the same trick as that above the Theatron in Solaria Luna; I asked Duquesne what could he see, he said we're so close to Mars you can clearly see the Lacus Solis. Puzzling. We are supposed to be in the asteroid belt, proper. Furthermore, he reports, the Apparation Chamber is locked. This could still all be a trap.

At the moment, I am alone in our quarters, on the top bunk, directly beneath the single skylight in the ceiling, a tiny dome through which I can see a few stars, a few hills and craters, and the horizon at varying degrees of closeness, the nearest edge of this world somehow only a few feet away. I expect, if this rock had an atmosphere, some of the light from Mars would reach me. I still don't understand why. Cassandra could spell it out for me.

It occurs to me the only things in this room that were ever changed since the _Pan Solaric_ took over the asteroids will have been the amount of lighting, and the number of bunks. Other than that, I may as well be a conditioned slave. What a pointless invasion, in the end. With the extinction of the true invaders the project became a wistful plot to maim Humankind into ecological subservience. We would have faced war by attempted brainwashing.

Since Duquesne fastened the lens to his wrist, a relatively safe, practical and discreet location, he seems unlikely ever to separate himself from it, and so I can only get a look in his presence. Des Esseintes on the other hand, whatever business he has roaming alone, has left his staff behind. It is an extremely dense, wooden rod of ashen grey, and little taller than a palm-held hiking stick. Given those attributes, the thing is remarkably bendy and springy. The wood is decorated all over, with carved geometric shapes, and colourless rubies where the lines cross. I swear they turn green at Carlos' touch. At the top end of the staff is a large matted crystal, held in its cradle by three tooth-like prongs curving around it. To physically interact with the staff ends in much the same way as the ill-suited conventional wands, only, a little overpowered. At the slightest spell-casting inclined movement from me, a wave of burning pin-pricks surges up my arm and I have to let go, with a hearty serving of widespread afermath convulsions. Fortunately the gravity up here is less than even the tellurian moon, and I have ample time to halt the staff in mid fall.

In contrast, the bone wand, sworn to me, is proportionately rather long and thin, and finished a shining ivory white. Though it looks frail and brittle, it is utterly unyielding, like processed arenak. I suppose strengthening enchantments can never be too strong. Exactly what animal the bones come from I don't possess sufficient savvy to say; but I suspect the handle is the top end of a thigh, and the rod is assembled from digits, with the last carved to a sharp point. The temptation to try gouging people's eyes out is going to be very distracting.

September 5th

09:36 a.m.

Correspondence # 1

Dear (what do I call you? I've never written you before, when I can't see you, who do I address by default?),

This is a Patronus. Don't ask me why it takes the form of an Elder Thing, nobody knows. At least nobody says anything conclusive. It carries the message you are (supposedly) hearing. And there's no delay. The trek from Mars to Pluto, instantaneous.

I exist, I hope you do too. Beware of Sally's handywork. She only left this morning, so I assume you haven't had the Ollivander wand-distributing experience yet. Unless she pulls her act together, don't get too hyped. Also, don't bother with actual classroom lessons. I don't know how the Committee was assembled but they have been across-the-board rubbish. I have not witnessed such lifeless and monotone reciting of drivel since my philo studies in Metz. If your odds are as good as mine there'll be plenty of magic savvy people happy to help you become mutually less clueless about spell-casting etc. And there'll be books. Also, find someone who's good with computers; I happen to have a handy roommate. There's a curfew, you see, but all the doors work on the same, non-magical network.

When you get hold of a wand or whatever, if it looks exotic and ancient and in any way super, try doing spells without speaking the words. Safer. Be wary of any 'really good kit', as Sally puts it She's singled out Ravenclaw to receive most of it.

We sleep in prison cells with bunk beds, and through my only window I have a whole face of this stone we live in to myself. What of you?

Hope to hear from you soon,

The Wart.

09:59 p.m.

 _To future self:_

I have torn out the last few pages. Today's chaos is seared into my brain well enough, and I will not hold hold record of hopeless folly.

* * *

 _ **Do you think I should write, say, on my profile, a list of all potentially obscure technical terms, where they come from, what they're supposed to be? At this stage it might not cover a page, but, well, I googled a couple of things in the fic and they weren't immediately obvious by any means. What do yous say?**_


End file.
